Practice Management Alert

As medical care continues to trend more toward customer service, sales training can make a big difference.

Some specialty practices have plenty of ancillary services and products to hawk, but all practices are built on successful person-to-person interactions. If the idea of incorporating sales training into your employee continuing education or orientation for new hires makes you cringe, you may be missing out on some surprisingly simple strategies that could help you better deliver care — and boost your bottom line.

Focus on Interactions

You’ve had interactions with salespeople in other spheres of your life. Good salespeople may have the reputation of being smooth talkers who could convince a cow to buy milk, but the secret to good sales may be much subtler — and applicable to both medicine and practice management.

“The very best salespeople aren’t always the slickest talkers — they’re actually the most effective listeners. Instead of ignoring the client and trying to stay one step ahead, an effective salesperson carefully listens to the client’s needs to really identify with them,” says Andrew Fayad, CEO and managing partner of eLearning Mind, in a post on Yesware blog.

Replace “salesperson” and “client” with “medical office employee” and “patient” and you can see how sales training can really benefit your practice.

Don’t ‘Teach’ too Much at Once

Focusing on tiny interjections of knowledge is key to making concepts stick. You don’t need to plan a multi-day seminar on sales (and confuse all of your team members on their job descriptions in the process).

Better yet: Consider everyday moments that happen in a practice, from front desk staff scheduling appointments or checking in patients to clinicians sussing out diagnoses. Your staff is so competent that they’re probably already asking the right questions to clarify patients’ needs.

Great salespeople are perceived to ask great questions — to really understand what a person is looking for — but they’re actually just listening well and paraphrasing what they just heard back to the client.

When you see a staff member doing this effectively, pointing out and acknowledging the method, especially to new hires, is a good way to emphasize both the usefulness of the tactic and to create a staff and workplace culture of active listeners. And a staff made up of active listeners makes a great impression on new patients while building a reputation for providing great, empathetic care.

If you feel like you need a better idea of good salesmanship or feel like you need to incorporate specific examples, consider TED Talks.

“TED Talks exhibit micro-learning at its finest. Industry professionals and thought leaders discuss a variety of topics to teach and inspire in digestible 15-minute increments. Incorporating this method to train salespeople in easily manageable intervals will keep them engaged and help you deliver new information they’ll actually retain,” says Fayad.

Ultimately, as a practice manager, you have a huge role in creating and maintaining the culture at your practice. If you have the time to do some homework, you can bring individual elements to staff meetings or add a tip to regular staff emails.

Provide Feedback and Consider Incentives

Feedback is crucial for optimizing staff performance. If you notice a moment or behavior that is emblematic of the culture of care you want your practice to provide, acknowledge it.

“’You’re cold! Now you’re getting warmer! You’re HOT!’ Even children playing the popular ’Hot or Cold’ game know that to perform well (find the hidden object) people need to be told how they’re doing. Without feedback, you’re walking blind. At best, you’ll accidentally reach your goal. At worst, you’ll wander aimlessly through the dark, never reaching your destination,” says the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on its website.

“Effective and timely feedback is a critical component of a successful performance management program and should be used in conjunction with setting performance goals. If effective feedback is given to employees on their progress towards their goals, employee performance will improve. People need to know in a timely manner how they’re doing, what’s working, and what’s not,” OPM says.

Many traditional salespeople work on commission, whether they’re selling cars in the suburbs or selling advertisements for national magazines. While commissions probably don’t fit into the realities of your practice or make sense for your hourly pay or salary budgeting, you can incentivize staff in other ways.

For example: Consider how restaurants or retail stores incentivize employees without adjusting their budgets. If business is slow, one or more employees are often allowed to head home early. In those business climates, nonessential employees are often the ones who are released early, but you could trial this concept for high-performing employees at your practice. Leaving at 2 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. could mean a world of difference for an overachieving nurse, who can finally catch her daughter’s soccer game, without costing your practice a dime.